Intrigue of Isolation
By Skye Freeman
As a kid growing up in the 2010s, when YouTube was the go-to place to find videos satisfying all of one’s niche interests, I remember seeing the wave of urban exploration content that’d pop up on my home page; their thumbnail photos of crumbling abandoned building or dim messy rooms lit by the beam of a flashlight scared me, yet my intrigue would build just enough for me to click on the video then quickly click away.
Graphic by Nicole Nguyen
It didn’t help that I was — and still am — afraid of scary content, whether horror movies or video games, but something about the eeriness of abandoned places felt alluring to me; they are places where time stands still, yet the decay and rot of years past pile up. Although my curiosity of those videos only spurred me to watch them on rare occasions, I took note of the many dedicated viewers and urban exploration subcommunities that they were a part of. While usually an illegal activity, exploring abandoned places has become a semi-popular activity for an adventurous some, from curious teens looking for a hangout spot to experienced professionals equipped with cameras and safety gear.
In spite of the implied fact that abandoned places aren’t the most safe nor secure, why are we so drawn to them and their once life-filled pasts, now yielded to a state of isolation and disarray?
Perhaps it's the feeling of lawlessness, the unspoken stories they hold; maybe it’s the thought that they were once occupied by living, breathing people like you and me, who built a life in that space or carry a memory pertaining to it, whether grand or fleeting; and possibly, your mind may flit to the tragic question of why it was abandoned to begin with. They appeal to human emotion, stirring up feelings of nostalgia, sorrow or fear. There’s a beauty in their eeriness, to examine structures or objects that we’re used to seeing in well-kept, intact states in lively spaces, now decaying, rotting and unusable.
Or maybe it's the stories, whether fact or fiction, of the reason for their ruin. A few years ago I went down the rabbit hole of the 2011 nuclear accident at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan. Although no one passed from radiation exposure, there were over 2,000 deaths among the evacuees, and over 150,000 residents displaced as a result, as areas near the accident were cut off from the public and left to decay due to danger of radiation exposure. Deserted buildings, now inhabited by rodents, insects and the other offspring of nature, while debris from the earthquake that accompanied the accident sit entangled with the overgrowth. Stores are full of rotting food, magazines are strewn across malls, calendars from 2011 hang on walls, toys decay on dusty shelves. Despite its tragic state, the area has attracted urban explorers, the wise equipped with gas masks, who travel to the city to witness time at a standstill.
Although I could hardly call myself an adventurous person and the thought of going somewhere so dangerous — nonetheless illegal — petrifies me, the idea of wandering those abandoned streets and stores and homes in Fukushima entices me all the while. I could blame my curiosity, or the thrill of the notion, but at my core I have a feeling it stems from a desire to, for a moment, exist in that frozen space, where the outside world would hold no influence over me, where all obligations would cease to exist, where I would briefly dwell in a place full of memories, whether happy or sad, with only myself to imagine those stories and appreciate the melancholy isolation of a space stuck in time.
